Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Entertainment
  3. Features

5 questions we have after The Mandalorian season 3, episode 1

Alex Welch
By

At long last, The Mandalorian has returned with its first new episode in more than two years.

The live-action Star Wars series wrapped up its second season in the winter of 2020. Now, The Mandalorian season 3 has made its long-awaited premiere on Disney+. While the series’ season 3 premiere is a surprisingly directionless and lackluster installment of television, that doesn’t mean the episode, titled The Apostate, doesn’t raise some compelling questions about the future of The Mandalorian.

Related Videos

Here’s everything we’re dying to know after The Mandalorian season 3 episode 1.

Will the Purrgil appear again?

A pod of Purrgil fly through hyperspace in The Mandalorian Season 3 Episode 1.
Lucasfilm

During a hyperspace trip early on in the Mandalorian season 3 premiere, Grogu looks out of his mini-cockpit and sees the silhouettes of multiple creatures flying just outside the limits of Din Djarin’s (Pedro Pascal) hyperspace trail. Fans of Star Wars Rebels should immediately recognize the creatures as Purrgil. Introduced in Star Wars Rebels, the Purrgil are a race of massive, tentacled space whales who have the ability to naturally travel through hyperspace.

The Purrgil are, perhaps, best-known for their role in the Star Wars Rebels series finale. The creatures are used by Ezra Bridger in that animated series’ final episode to hyperspace jump both himself and Grand Admiral Thrawn to an unknown region of the galaxy. While it remains to be seen whether or not the Purrgil will have any role to play in The Mandalorian season 3, the creatures will almost certainly appear in Ahsoka.

The upcoming live-action Disney+ series is expected to be a quasi-sequel to Star Wars Rebels — one that may very well reveal what happened to Ezra and Thrawn after the Purrgil took them somewhere far, far away.

Who will become the new marshal of Nevarro?

Greef Karga wears a red robe in The Mandalorian Season 3 Episode 1.
Lucasfilm

During his visit to Nevarro, Din Djarin (aka The Mandalorian) is surprised to discover that the planet has not only become a successful and booming new trade stop, but that it is also in desperate need of a new marshal.

Din is asked to take the position by the planet’s High Magistrate, Greef Karga (Carl Weathers), but he turns the request down. That means someone else will have to eventually step up and become Nevarro’s new marshal, but it seems safe to say that viewers will have to wait to find out who Karga chooses to fill the position instead of Din.

Who is Gorian Shard?

Gorian Shard stands in a ship control room in The Mandalorian Season 3 Episode 1.
Lucasfilm

Over the course of The Apostate, Din Djarin makes a new enemy of a fierce pirate captain named Gorian Shard (Nonso Anozie). However, despite the danger he seems to pose to both Din and Greef Karga, very little information is actually revealed about Shard in The Mandalorian’s season 3 premiere. Unfortunately, there’s nowhere else fans can look for info about Shard, as the character’s appearance in The Apostate marks his Star Wars debut.

Based on Shard’s reaction to just how soundly Din and Greef manage to shut down his attacks in The Apostate, though, it seems safe to say that the pirate king will show up again at some point in The Mandalorian season 3.

Will Bo-Katan attempt to take the Darksaber?

Bo-Katan sits on a throne in The Mandalorian Season 3 Episode 1.
Lucasfilm

At the end of The Mandalorian’s season 3 premiere, Din pays a visit to none other than Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff). Din attempts to join Bo-Katan’s crusade to bring their people back to Mandalore, but he is informed by Sackhoff’s mandalorian leader that her forces all slowly left her after she failed to retake the Darksaber from Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito) in the Mandalorian season 2 finale.

Bo-Katan asks Din if he still has the Darksaber just before telling him to use it to win the support of her former followers. However, while Bo-Katan doesn’t make a move against Din during their brief interaction in The Apostate, it’s clear that she’s become immensely bitter over the impact his defeat of Moff Gideon has had on her claim to the throne of Mandalore. Taking that into account, it seems fair to ask: Will Bo-Katan ever grow tired of sitting in her castle and decide to try and take the Darksaber from Din herself?

The Mandalorian’s season 3 premiere certainly lays the groundwork for that very turn of events to happen, but fans will have to wait to find out whether or not Bo-Katan’s potential feud with Din ever comes to fruition.

What will Din find on the surface of Mandalore?

Din Djarin stands in Bo-Katan's castle in The Mandalorian Season 3 Episode 1.
Lucasfilm

If The Apostate makes one thing explicitly clear, it’s that Din is going to visit the supposedly destroyed planet of Mandalore at some point in The Mandalorian season 3. Over the course of the season’s first episode, Din repeatedly states his desire to bathe in the planet’s living waters and redeem himself for the past instances in which he has taken off his helmet.

Din has, in response, been told by multiple people that the surface of Mandalore was turned into a poisonous wasteland by the Empire, but he seems determined to find out for himself whether that’s true. Unfortunately, as is the case with many of the leftover mysteries from The Mandalorian’s season 3 premiere, we’ll just have to wait to see exactly what Din finds whenever he actually makes it back to his people’s home planet.

New episodes of The Mandalorian premiere Wednesdays on Disney+.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
5 questions we have after The Last of Us episode 8
Ellie holds a rifle in The Last of Us Episode 8.

In its eighth episode, HBO’s The Last of Us adapts one of the darkest chapters of the 2013 video game that inspired it. Picking up an unspecified amount of time after the events of the series’ seventh installment, The Last of Us episode 8, titled When We Are in Need, follows Ellie (Bella Ramsey) as she fights to survive a series of interactions with a priest-like madman named David (Scott Shepherd).

David is, just as he is in the original Last of Us, the predatory leader of a group of post-apocalyptic cannibals. Ellie’s scenes with him rank firmly as some of the most unnerving and psychologically disturbing that The Last of Us has delivered up to this point. His right-hand man, James, is also, notably, played by Troy Baker, the actor who portrayed Joel in the original Last of Us games.

Read more
The 10 best Star Wars bounty hunters, ranked
Temuera Morrison in a scene from The Book of Boba Fett.

Among the few mainstays of the Star Wars universe, perhaps none is more reliable than the bounty hunter. They don't exist in every Star Wars property, but they are present in many of them, and whenever they show up, you can pretty much guarantee they're going to be cool. Boba Fett became an icon after the original trilogy, even though he only has like five minutes of total screen time. Why? Because he looks so freakin' cool.

Boba is maybe the most well-known bounty hunter in the Star Wars universe, but he's far from the only one. Over the course of decades of expanded mythology, we've met a wide array of different bounty hunters with unique designs and personalities. Now, with season 3 of The Mandalorian about to premiere, it's time to count down the very best of the group. These are the 10 best bounty hunters in the history of Star Wars. 
10. IG-11

Read more
5 questions we have after The Last of Us episode 7
Ellie reads a book to Riley in The Last of Us Episode 7.

The Last of Us episode 7 catches up with Ellie (Bella Ramsey) as she tries to take care of a dangerously injured Joel (Pedro Pascal). When the episode, titled Left Behind, begins, Ellie and Joel have hunkered down in the basement of an abandoned house. Joel isn’t nearly as concerned for himself as he is for Ellie, though. He orders her to leave him behind and travel back to the Wyoming compound his brother, Tommy (Gabriel Luna), now calls home.

Moments later, Left Behind cuts back to months earlier, when Ellie was still a FEDRA trainee in Boston. The flashback episode then follows Ellie and her best friend, Riley (Storm Reid), as they share an unforgettable night in an abandoned Boston mall. In the episode’s closing moments, viewers witness the infected attack that not only brought Ellie and Riley’s night to a tragic end, but also resulted in Ellie discovering her immunity to The Last of Us’ fictional Cordyceps virus.

Read more